The Short Straw
by pyrrhicvictoly
Summary: The princess is in another castle. Prequel to "Nine Point Eight..."


**When Fate Hands You the Short Straw, Use It to Blow Spitballs**

One of the greatest perils of being in an all-boy's school was that there was never anyone willing to play the damsel in distress when one was needed. But what was the point of slaying monsters and saving the world if there wasn't a princess to rescue at the end of it? There couldn't _not_ be a princess, so they duked it out with rock-paper-scissors, flipped coins, and drew lots. The winners were heroes or villains, the others sidekicks or henchmen, and the one unlucky loser got strapped to a tree with oranges shoved into his yukata to simulate boobs.

Girls had cooties, but girls could be princesses. Gintoki had never wished so badly to contract cooties, even though he'd heard that cooties made your dick itch something fierce. If only their school had cooties, they could tie one of those cootie-bags to the tree, and Gintoki could go take a nap. Why had he even asked to join them? Just because it looked like everyone was having fun... What was so fun about being immobilized and guarded by the three lowest henchmen? None of this would have happened if he'd just stayed by himself.

_Poke._

Gintoki lazily turned to the face the offender who had nudged him. "Whaddaya want?"

"Gintoki, the princess is supposed to scream and stuff."

_Poke poke._

"Aaahhh. Help, help, save me. Oh, I'm so helpless, so disgustingly helpless. Save me, aaah."

The two other henchmen ambled up to them. The boy in front had a gloating sneer on his face. "You suck at this, you curly-haired freak!"

"Fuck you, Fatso."

"My name is Ueda, not Fatso! You better remember it or I'll smash your face in!" Fatso lifted up his meaty fist in a gesture that was supposed to be threatening. In truth, it was only threatening to people who were scared of being hit with Jello.

"Hee hee hee~!" Fatso's buddy snickered. It was a really nasty sounding snicker. Gintoki figured that if a dung beetle drowned in a sea of fecal matter and came back as a vengeful ghost that lives in toilets and possesses people by shooting up their assholes when they take a shit, and if such a thing could make a sound, it would probably sound like this.

This thought made him smile as he said, "Fuck you too, Shithead."

"Say that again! I dare ya!"

There were now two angry boys getting their halitosis in Gintoki's face, and it looked as if an unfair fight was about to break out. The third guard was starting to look nervous; this was the nicer one who had done the poking. Since he wasn't entirely unbearable, Gintoki decided not to insult him for the time being.

"Come on, we shouldn't be fighting!" he said, tugging the others away. He then turned to Gintoki. "It'll be more fun for everyone if you tried to act like a princess. Please? It's just this once. You get immunity next time."

Gintoki pondered this request; pondered it deeply. Hmm... Henchman #3 was an okay sort of guy, and he'd asked nicely... But then again, taking this role seriously would mean that he was a pushover... Hmm... It was the greatest existential crisis Gintoki had faced thus far in his life.

"Well, all right, then... I guess there's nothing left for me to do except - Guys! Hey, all you other henchmen! I don't want to be the princess! Someone switch with me!"

"What the hell!"

Oops. Henchman #3 probably didn't like him so much anymore, if his shaking fists were anything to go by. On the upside, their shouting had gotten almost everyone's attention. The other not-so-low henchmen were gathering around the princess tree, so there was a chance that _someone_ would take his place, right? All Gintoki had to do was sweeten the deal a little bit.

"Whoever switches with me gets to eat my boobs."

"Eeeww!" The other kids screamed in unison.

"What? They're the good kind, I swear. They might be kinda small, but they're juicy and sweet."

This proclamation was also met with much gagging.

"Sorry, no can do."

"Yeah, I'm not switching."

"Too bad, Gintoki. We drew straws, and you got the short one."

They were all ganging up on him and it wasn't fair! Gintoki struggled against the ropes, but all he got out of it was rope burn. "It's not fair! Zura looks way more like a princess than I do!"

"Katsura can't be the princess because he's playing Mario."

"But why can't I be Mario?"

"Because Katsura's being Mario."

"That doesn't make sense! That's, ah, that's round reasoning, which is a form of illogical flatulency!"

"What's an illogical flatulency? You just made that word up."

"Nuh uh! Illogical flatulency is, um, when the stuff you say sucks so bad it smells like wet farts. It means you're pretty much passing ass-gas from your mouth."

"..."

"Anyway, Mario is short so it only makes sense that the one who draws the short straw should play Mario."

"That makes even less sense!"

"Ha! You admit that your original argument didn't make sense!"

Gintoki was interrupted from his gloating by the sounds of shouting and scuffling coming from behind the tree. He craned his head toward the noise, and was barely able to catch a glimpse of Takasugi chasing Katsura, the two of them barreling toward the edge of the forest where the final battle was to be held.

"Bwahahahaha!" Takasugi wriggled his fingers and laughed as menacingly as he could with his pudgy baby face.

"Hey, Takasugi should be the princess. He's the squishiest."

"Shut _up_, Gintoki!"

Gintoki tugged at the ropes again with a sullen look on his face. Takasugi and Zura got to duke it out while he was stuck here with orange-boobs and rope burn and it _wasn't fair_. Gintoki consoled himself with thoughts of how they looked like total morons hopping around like that and chucking sticks at each other as if they were fireballs.

But just as he was starting to feel better, Gintoki heard Takasugi give a sad excuse for a cry of defeat, and then Zura was striding over to him with his chest puffed out.

"I have come to rescue you! Ahaha! An arduous journey, to be sure, but nevertheless, the day is saved." As if his annoying speech wasn't enough, Katsura struck a "heroic" pose and tweaked the fake mustache he'd made out of two fern leaves stuck to his upper lip with tree sap. It was crooked and green. "Are you all right, princess?"

"Do I look all right to you?"

"You look disheveled. No one has besmirched your honor?"

Gintoki stared at the unbelievable amount of stupidity he was facing. By now he'd managed to wiggle one arm out of the binding, and all it took was a little more tugging to get the other side free. So maybe Zura had helped a little with that, but it wasn't as if Gintoki couldn't have done it by himself. After all, stupid Zura only saw fit to show up after Gintoki had pulled himself halfway out of the bonds.

"Bwaaaaargh!" Takasugi rose from the flames, his diminutive stature and high-pitched roar striking fear in the hearts of no one. With arms outstretched, he launched himself at Katsura, latching on to the other boy's shoulder.

_Chomp!_

"Aaaah! He took a bite out of Mario! Now Mario's not Super Mario anymore!"

In response to this unexpected turn of events, Katsura pulled a colorful mushroom out of his clothes and shoved it into his mouth.

Of course. What other course of action could there be? While Takasugi was staring dumbly at his friend's shroom-eating skills, Katsura jumped on him. Literally.

"Eeek!" Takasugi squeaked. He was flattened. He was defeated. For days afterward, he would have a bump on his head and bruises on his back shaped like Katsura's knees.

Katsura struck another pose, this time extending his hand to Gintoki. "Come, princess, let's go back to the Mushroom Kingdom and live happily ever after!"

"Nuh-uh, no way. I'm _not _the princess."

"You're the princess. I defeated Bowser for you, so now's the part where you say, 'Oh, my hero~! Marry me~!' and then I say, 'Hahaha! 'Twas nothing, my fair maiden!'"

"Who'd wanna marry you, Zura? You're gloomy and both your mustache and hair are fake!"

"It's not Zura, it's Mario!"

"Eating random stuff you picked off the ground doesn't make you Mario!"

"I didn't get it off the ground! It was in a question block!"

"The only question block around here is the one in your head! Maybe if I knocked it a few times, coins would come out of your ass, huh?"

"You are the ugliest, most ungrateful princess ever! See if I ever rescue you again! You're on your own when Mothra destroys Edo Bay!"

It was at this time that Gintoki felt a large hand on his shoulder. He cut off his retort and looked up to see Sensei's disappointed face.

* * *

><p>Gintoki didn't know how long Sensei had been there, but it was apparently long enough to earn him an admonishment about using crude language. But then Sensei had originally come over because someone had gone to get help for Takasugi, so Katsura, too, had to be punished for knocking out a classmate even if he hadn't meant to. Sensei had said something about knowing the limits of roughhousing or something along those lines.<p>

They were lucky that Sensei's punishment this time was more like "sit over there and think about what you did" rather than "write lines until your hands fall off" or "you're on cleaning duty until you're old enough to grow hair on your balls". It was a nice day, so Gintoki didn't really mind having to miss out on today's history lesson, even if it was story time and they were finally getting to the Battle of Dan-no-ura and the shogun's rise to power and all that good stuff. He'd just copy Zura's notes because Zura was popular and some dumbass was always trying to suck up to him, so that dumbass would let Zura copy his notes, stupid Zura...

Stupid Zura was staring at him; Gintoki could see this from the corner of his eye. Then he pulled out more colorful mushrooms from a hidden pocket somewhere in his yukata.

"Want one?"

"That's a poison shroom."

"It's a super shroom. Poison shrooms are purple, not red. Oh, this one's a 1up - you can have it."

"You... really shouldn't be eating those..."

Zura only stared at him, serious as ever, and then popped a "super shroom" into his mouth. Zura was a _weirdo_. Gintoki wondered why he'd never noticed this before. He'd always just thought that the other boy was kind of girly looking, and one of those studious teacher's pet types that got angry when you teased them because they couldn't take a joke about their girly hair. Gintoki had thought, perhaps erroneously, that he was shunned because the other boys looked up to Zura as their leader of sorts, and Zura was a haughty noble who disapproved of dirty strays like him.

Huh. Maybe Zura wasn't so bad.

Gintoki leaned his head against the tree and pretended not to see the little green mushroom on the ground next to him, sitting on top of a fern mustache.


End file.
